How to Become a Thought Leader in Six Steps

It’s gospel that you have to cultivate your personal brand, particularly if you have designs on the C suite. But because everyone has a brand nowadays (Tom Peters describes it as “your promise to the marketplace and the world”) simply having one is insufficient if you want to advance. You can’t just be known as “the guy who speaks Spanish” or “the programmer who can explain things well” or “that woman in legal who gets things done fast.” That’s nice — but there are a million of you, and in a globalized world, your company can find an alternative to you fast. That’s why you need to establish yourself as a thought leader. Good employees and good executives are nice to have. Thought leaders are irreplaceable — and indispensible.

So how do you build a reputation as a singular expert — someone who doesn’t just participate in the conversation, but drives it? In a word: leverage. No matter how brilliant and talented you are, you won’t be sufficiently appreciated within your organization or by your customers until the broader public recognizes you. This outside reinforcement becomes an echo chamber that brings money and respect. How to get it? Follow these six steps to jump-start your thought leadership. Not all avenues will be open to you at the start, but most will in time.

1. Create a Robust Online Presence. Not everyone can immediately jump to international prominence (CNN probably won’t book you as a talking head if you’ve never been on local TV). But everyone can start here, with an online beachhead. Blogs are particularly good because they showcase your knowledge — and search engines prize the frequent stream of fresh content. Most blogs are unloved and unread — but yours can be different with a little time and elbow grease. Good content is key, of course, but so is making friends (online and off) with other bloggers to create a virtuous, networked circle. Some of the best advice is from Chris Brogan, an otherwise unfamous guy who has been blogging for a decade, made himself a critical cog in the blogger world, and has turned it into big-time book contracts and bestsellers.

2. Flaunt High-Quality Affiliations. This one is often more about luck than anything else (I might be blogging this post from the White House if I’d been a high-ranking staffer for Barack Obama instead of for Howard Dean), but if you’ve got well-known connections, flaunt them and leverage them. Ivy League pedigree? Stint at McKinsey? Testimonial quotes from industry celebs? It’s credibility by proxy.

3. Give Public Speeches. Given the terror that public speaking instills in most people, your street cred will automatically skyrocket when you take the stage. Start with Rotary and the local Chamber of Commerce, and work your way up to associations, conferences, and in-house gigs for major corporations (you can literally write them a letter, suggest a topic, and ask to be considered). Buy the National Trade and Professional Associations directory to find out who to contact, and double-dip the benefit by promoting your engagements relentlessly (showcasing your desirability to others), and recording everything so you can cross-post like a maniac on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Your goal is ubiquity.

4. Appear on TV. Make it a point to build relationships with TV producers — you can often follow them on Twitter and strike up a conversation. Cable news outlets are particularly good targets because they have so much airtime to fill. Create a media kit (with your bio, some writing you’ve done, and topics you can comment on) and send it over. And when breaking news hits, shoot producers an email offering to appear and listing the main points you’ll make. If they’re in enough of a rush to book guests, you may hit the jackpot.

5. Win Some Awards. It’s chicken-and-egg: when you’re famous enough, everyone wants to give you awards, because your name will be a “draw” for their events. But how do you get the awards you need to propel your thought leader momentum, early on? Chutzpah. Don’t shy away from nominating yourself, or strong-arming colleagues into doing so for you. Identify the awards that matter in your industry, monitor the deadlines, and make it happen. Often, there are fewer nominations than you might think, and you can win by “default.” There’s even a service that lets you search for relevant awards to apply for.

6. Publish a Book. This is the hardest piece of the puzzle, especially since the publishing industry has been hiding under a rock and cowering since their “Black Wednesday” massacre in 2008. No one’s willing to take a chance on authors without a sufficient “platform,” so your job is to establish one through the methods above. The good news is that once you break through and get a contract, the world is your oyster: there is no more definitive proof of thought leadership than authoring a good book on your chosen subject. Trot out your sample copy, rinse, and repeat. The five previous steps have become infinitely easier now that you’re a published author.

What other techniques do you employ to build a reputation as a thought leader?